Danse Macabre
by Niglia
Summary: Caroline is a witch and Klaus is the devilish creature evoked by her to make him help her in saving her friends' life. To pay her debt, she's forced in turn to help him taking his revenge over the witches who imprisoned him many centuries ago...
1. Chapter 1

**Danse Macabre**

**Summary.** Caroline is a witch and Klaus is the devilish creature evoked by her to make him help her in saving her friends' life. To pay her debt, she's forced to help him taking his revenge over the witches who imprisoned him many centuries ago… [Rated M; AU; Drama/Horror/Romance]

**Some Notes from the Author.** This fiction doesn't really follow the chronology of the TV series. Here a small guide so that the following events won't confuse you: Caroline has always been a witch and, as long with Bonnie, she has knew it since she was a child; Stefan and Damon are now living in Mystic Falls and Elena has just turned into a vampire, but we don't have any Originals or any Doppelgänger, _for now_. No Silas, no Hayley, maybe a little of Matt, and definitively no Cure; Tyler is just a werewolf, and as for the "famous" dead of the show, well, they are all still dead.

The story could easily take place during the summer before college.

Now that I've brought I little more light on the story, I just have to wish you good reading. :)

* * *

**Chapter 1**

**.**

**.**

«_The wolf thought to himself, what a tender young creature. What a nice plump mouthful..._»

.

.

Two weeks had already passed since a strange plague had mysteriously hit and made ill all the supernatural creatures in Mystic Falls. It seemed there wasn't any explanation. One after the other fell. With first the werewolves and then the vampires, they all seemed to collapse just like fragile flies under the influence of that evil miasma. Someone had suggested that the germ of that epidemic was carried by the wind – perhaps there was vervain or wolfsbane dust blowing in the air – yet others asserted that it was a powerful spell, casted to fulfill a twisted revenge.

Only the coven of thirteen witches who had lived in Mystic Falls for four centuries seemed immune to this illness, which of course did nothing but fuel the rumors about the latter conjecture. Of course, the stubborn silence of the Council's members did not help much to appease; but then they had less chance of being blamed for what was happening, given the relationships that some of them had with the supernatural creatures that were slowly perishing.

And this was precisely the reason that had driven Caroline and Bonnie, two of the youngest and more capable witches of Mystic Falls, to meet secretly to look for a way to save their friends' lives, who happened to be disappointingly all supernatural beings.

«There _must _be something we can do», said Caroline, violently flipping through the pages of her grimoire. «We can't just let our friends die.»

«I don't know what to think, Care», Bonnie replied, raising her head from the book to watch apprehensively as her friend sat on the bed. «If all this is caused by the Spirits, there's nothing we can do. You heard the Supreme. This plague doesn't affect us, so maybe we should just let it do its course.»

«Are you listening to yourself, Bon? My boyfriend is a freaking werewolf, in case you forgot, and right now, he's confined in bed with a fever, chills and in desperate need of my help. So you excuse me if I don't have any intentions to let the Spirits kill him», Caroline retorted, trying to contain her anger. She hated feeling so weak and useless, but she also knew that it was unfair to blame Bonnie. «Besides», she added more gently. «We're talking about Elena too. She's our friend, Bon, don't you think that it is our duty to help her?»

«I would give my life for my friends, Care, you know that», the young Bennett sighed, shrugging.

«See? That's the spirit, Bonnie! Now, back to work», she ordered with a little smile.

They spent several hours studying the books and the old parchments full of notes belonged to their grandmothers, but it seemed a waste of time. Apparently, this was the first time, _ever_, that such a storm came upon a town to exterminate slowly all the supernatural beings. There was not even a single reference that a similar thing would have happened in the past, and the two witches were beginning to lose patience.

Caroline groaned exasperatedly, closing her grimoire with a loud noise and throwing it away. «Okay, I'm sick of it.» She stopped. «Wait a second, Bon», she said, standing up and running out of her bedroom and down the stairs, leaving a perplexed expression on her friend's face. When she came back two minutes later, however, Bonnie's eyes went wide in realization of the thing that Caroline was holding in her arms.

«Care, what the hell is that?» She asked, though she was afraid of the answer.

«It's the Book of Shadows», Caroline said in a tiny whisper, closing the door behind her and reaching again her friend on the bed.

«Oh my God, are you serious? It belongs to the Supreme, how on earth have you stolen it?»

Caroline rolled her eyes, impatient. «I haven't stole anything, Bon, my mother just borrowed it some days ago. Now, be quiet – we must read it quickly before she comes back from work.»

«I can't believe we are doing this», Bonnie whispered.

«Yeah, well, neither can I, and yet here we are.»

«I wonder if you _do_ realize what are we risking, by reading this book without any authorization», Bonnie carried on her preaching, staring sideways at her friend. «This is by far the worst thing we've done since that blasted daylight ring! What if the book is cursed? What if it… I don't know… strikes us dead?»

«You've been listening too much to your granny's stories, Bon», Caroline retorted, without deigning her friend of another look. «_Voilà_! The book is open and I'm still alive. Now, unless you don't want to help me, please shut up and let me read.»

Bonnie's resigned sigh gave her the answer she wanted to hear.

While reading the infamous Book of Shadows was so interesting to make them forget their original plan – there were spells and formulas in every known language, ancient drawings of monstrous creatures that they hoped to be extinct, and even hand-written notes on the edge of the pages of a hundred different witches – Caroline finally managed to find something that captured her interest.

«Bon, look! Read this, it sounds interesting.» Caroline handed her the book, pointing out a yellow page.

With a curious look on her eyes, Bonnie took the book with a sort of cautious deference. «Mm. _Niklaus Mikaelson, known as the Hybrid. Confined while still alive on the Other Side_ – how can it even be possible? –_ by Qetsiyah's coven, in the first century Before Christ. His curse condemned him to crave and feed on blood and to abandon his human shape on full moon nights; but thanks to his cruelty and his corrupt slyness, he made sure to turn his curse into a blessing, and so he became the most powerful creature… _Care, I don't understand, why this text could be of any help?»

«Just keep reading, Bonnie!»

«Okay, okay… So, _most powerful creature_… blah blah blah… Oh, you mean this? _Because of the curse, legends say that his blood has healing properties, even more than the blood of a simple creature of the night: it can cure a werewolf bite, usually fatal to any vampire, and makes him invincible. The inability to definitively kill him has forced our ancestors to confine him in a prison specially created for him._» Bonnie stopped reading only to watch Caroline with a concerned expression. «Please, Care, tell me you're not really thinking of let this creature free.»

«Why not, Bonnie? We _are _powerful enough; we have been practicing and studying magic since we were children», she stated, with an impatient wave of her hand.

«Caroline, this… this hybrid, or whoever he is, is dangerous! Surely, there is an explanation more than comprehensive for the fact that he has been secluded only God knows where. Perhaps you didn't read the small print, but he can't be killed, and there's no way you can control him! And don't even let me start with the fact that it's totally against the rules.»

«Yes, well, are we talking of the same rules that, technically, prevented us from creating a daylight ring for Elena?» Caroline retorted, with a slight hint of annoyance in her voice. «Have you forgotten how many times we already broke those rules, just for our friends?»

Bonnie seemed suddenly taken aback by Caroline's sideswipe, and she realized she had nothing to refute with. «I'm just saying», she insisted though, trying to put some sense in her friend. «There must be another option. And we don't even know for sure if his blood could save Tyler, or Elena, or the others! Look, I'm going home now, I want to take a look in my gram's grimoire. I'm sure we'll find a spell less drastic, okay? Please, Care, just… be patient, don't do something stupid giving heed to your fear and the heat of the moment.»

Caroline stayed silent for a couple of terrible seconds, pouting and valuating Bonnie's wise words. «Fine», she muttered eventually, crossing her arms. «It was a stupid idea, anyway.»

Bonnie did not like having to be the voice of conscience of her friend, and certainly, she felt sorry for having to break her ideas and throw out what, in theory, could also be a good plan. But they knew virtually nothing about the creature that Caroline would have liked to evoke. The Book was very vague about him with merely a warning to anyone who read not to awaken such a monster, but other than that it did not go into further detail. Bonnie could understand the disappointment of her friend: here they spoke to choose between a hypothetical danger represented by such a hybrid, and a real danger, namely the death of their closer friends - no, far worse, the death of her boyfriend. Yet Bonnie remained firm in the idea that it would be wiser for them to proceed with feet of lead, and controlling the book of her grandmother seemed therefore the best solution; if only they hadn't had to operate secretly, all these problems wouldn't be there.

So Bonnie left, lulled by the certainty of having brought back her friend's senses, but Caroline was far away from giving up her only hope. If the young Bennett were really determined not to help her, _fine_, she would come to terms with the idea of having to roll up her sleeves and do everything alone. Besides, she had the strange feeling that the other witches did not want to do anything to save the vampires and the werewolves – it didn't seem to matter that most of them knew Tyler's and Elena's families all their life. She could maybe understand somehow their hatred towards the Salvatore brothers, who since their arrival to Mystic Falls had done nothing but messed up with their peaceful existences. She seriously couldn't come to terms with the fact that the coven would have rather watched the kids who they had seen grow up die, without even shedding a tear.

Caroline wasn't a fool, she was actually well aware that what she was going to do was against all her coven's rules. Just as Bonnie had told her, she was risking too much – perhaps the other witches wouldn't kill her, but they could still deprive her of her powers, and then banish her from the coven. It would have been an affront to her mother and her ancestors, and she could even lose the support of the Spirits if the spell had gone wrong – but she didn't have any other choice, she had to try no matter what the consequences would be.

So, she began to copy carefully the Greek words of the spells, in order to return the book without her mother noticing its missing, and then she went in search of the necessary ingredients that would have ensured the success of the ritual. She took a jar of salt from the kitchen, a sharp knife, some candles and bandages and then she put all this in her bag. The Book of Shadows was put back from where she had taken it in her mother's bedroom, and at that point, she was ready to go.

«The things I do for love», she sighed, entering the car.

.

.

.

The wind hadn't stop blowing on the city not even for a moment. It was cold, relentless and merciless, it brought tears to the eyes and then froze them on the cheeks. Even breathing was painful, not only for the supernatural creatures but for the human being as well. It made the trees stirred restlessly, the shutters of the windows rattled and the gates creaked ominously, which let the desire to go outside of the house pass to anyone with a little common sense. Carol Lockwood had called her a couple of minutes ago, crying, begging her to doing something for her son, who appeared to be passed out from the amount of pain.

«I'm working on it, Carol», Caroline had assured her, terribly worried about Tyler. «Trust me.»

However, how could she ask someone to trust her, though she had not any faith on what she was about to do? The truth is she was afraid. If that spell was contained in the Book of Shadows, and if Merrick, the Supreme, had never told them about it – because it was impossible that she wasn't aware of it, since she had to know every spell and every magic of her grimoire – well, that had to mean something. And yet, Caroline still did not understand why the coven persisted in not wanting to take any action, as if in the end they approved the work of that wicked wind.

She drove into the woods as far as she could, but then the ground went so bumpy that she was forced to leave the car and walk further into the forest. There was a place in there in which converged the power of hundreds of generation of witches – her coven rarely went there, since none of them practiced anymore spells so formidable as to require such a great power – and that Caroline had no hesitation to draw from it.

_Perhaps_, she thought with a shiver of apprehension, _the Spirits will forgive me, and will let me use it. After all, I'm doing all this to save my friends, and not for a personal gain._

But the wind seemed only to grew stronger, as soon as she had had that thought.

Without wasting any more precious time, Caroline took the jar from her bag and began to form a solid circle with the salt, just in the middle of the power center. She counted her steps and she intoned simple spells of imprisonment and protection, which would serve to block the creature inside the circle for all the time necessary. Then, when the last handful of salt closed the ring, Caroline took the knife and carved a deep but not dangerous cut on her arm, and then let her own blood flow in the empty jar: the salt, in fact, would have prevented the hybrid from going out, but the blood would secure her control over him. With this comforting thought, she dipped the tip of the knife into the dark and thick liquid collected in the jar, and she carefully drained it along the edge of the circle of salt. When the last drop of blood fell to the ground, closing the circle, Caroline felt a sudden sensation of entirety, as if everything had just found its place.

Only in the end, she settled five candles in places that should represent the five elements of nature, ideally drawing a star, and then with a silent thought, she lit them: the flames lighted up the darkness of the woods, creating frightening shadows all around her. The wind had died.

«No need to be afraid, Caroline», she murmured to herself. «You can handle this.»

She tried to stay focused while reading her own notes of the spell at the faint light of the candles. At the beginning, she was shaking so much that she could not read her own writing, but then, quite suddenly, she was able to find that secret place within herself, from which she drew her power with the same ease with which one draws water from a well. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and when she re-opened them she felt enveloped by a new and stronger determination.

The spell's words flowed from her mouth with the simplicity of a nursery rhyme, relaxing her with their familiarity. To wield the magic was undoubtedly the thing that she preferred; to feel the tingle of power on the surface of her skin, as if endless sparks of energy came from the center of her body and poured outside to wrap her in a warm cloak of magic, it was something that made her feel invincible, fearless - almost immortal. The wind that now whistled through her hair, making them move gently, it was not as scary as that of the epidemic, but it was warm, pleasant and reassuring: it was the feeling of home. The flames of the candles hissed up in the air, bringing light to the previously darkened forest and all in the matter of seconds.

Caroline kept her eyes shut and continued to recite the spell, raising her voice so that it stood higher over the wind noise. Thank God she was not only tapping into her magic, otherwise the power of the spell would have destroyed her – she tried not to think about the fact that she also could lose control and collapse, as it happened so many years ago when she still had wielded the real magic for the first time.

Then the wind suddenly disappeared, and it seemed to take away fragments of the power, torn so violently that Caroline stopped breathing for a few seconds, gasping for air. But, when she finally found the courage to open her eyes, she could not but mentally thank all the Spirits in realizing that her spell had been successful.

The creature – _the hybrid_ – seemed a terrible beast born from a nightmare, and then jumped out from the most distressing antrum of the underworld. Caroline didn't resist, and she found herself drawing back slowly and carefully, with her hands down so that he wouldn't consider her a threat. In the short span of time that followed his manifestation, she had managed to notice several details that concerned him, as the fact that he clearly belonged to another era. His dirty clothes were torn in several places and fell on him as rags, denuding portions of skin from which she could see wounds and old scars; his long hair was a mess of tangled and dirty blonde curls, which once must have been his pride. He had the well-built physique of the warrior, with broad shoulders and long and strong arms – she could easily imagine him wielding a sword during a fight.

When he suddenly turned around and saw her, Caroline really feared for her life. His face was disfigured by a furious grimace – in his golden eyes was the reflected glow of the candle light, his mouth was a fatal trap of two sets of menacing fangs, and his claws were as long and sharp as his teeth. He then growled, and that horrible and primordial cry seemed to hush the whole forest. He tried to run towards her using his supernatural speed, but thank God the invisible barrier created by salt and blood blocked him.

Only then, Caroline began to breathe once again.

«Please, listen to me», she started, taking a heedful step forward. «I don't mean any harm.»

«_Who. Are. You?_» He bellowed in hoarse and rasping voice, as if he hadn't had a chance to talk for a very long time.

«I'm the witch who summoned you», Caroline answered, trying not to let her voice trembling.

But the hybrid seemed not to have heard any words. «_Blood. I. Need. Blood!_» He grumbled once again with a hint of desperation, running from side to side inside the circle as if he was desperately looking for a gap.

«Okay, now stop. Stop it! I'm ordering you!» She screamed, trying to sound as authoritative as possible. She had to make it clear to the creature who was in command between them; otherwise, as Bonnie already pointed out, she would not be able to control him.

Her scream finally caught his attention, but when he looked back at her, he did not seem impressed at all. His face's features were still threating, and plus it seemed to have turned on in the depths of his eyes, a mocking light.

«_You dare to command me?_» He hissed, with his eyes narrowed.

Something in his tone gave her the strength to master the situation better. «Yes! Yes, I dare, and if you don't stop your attitude, I will send you back into the damn hole from which I pulled you out!»

He didn't answer, merely scowling at her, but somehow Caroline knew she had gained his attention. «Now, you have to listen carefully to what I say. Understand?» She continued, waving a finger towards him. «I'll give you some blood, since you seem like you really need it, but know that I can make you feel a pain beyond your imagination if even the thought of attacking me takes shape in your mind.»

As she continued her little speech, Caroline felt more and more confident about her task. Then, under the watchful eyes of the creature, she took again the knife and reopened the wound previously inflicted, collecting some more of her blood in a bowl: his eyes darkened for his thirst, staring at her from behind a thick curtain of matted curls, but surprisingly he waited patiently for Caroline to hand him it.

«Here. Have at it», she said, reaching out long enough to put down the bowl inside the circle so that he could take it.

In a movement too fast for her eyes – though the most part of her friends were supernatural creatures, she still hadn't get used to their speed – he grabbed the bowl and drank the blood in just one sip. «I want more», he grunted, throwing the empty bowl on the ground.

«You'll have more blood when you agree to help me», she said, in a tone that brooked no argument.

Caroline swore she heard him snort with amusement. «I like your use of "when", it's very confident», he murmured, moving a step forward towards the edge of the circle.

It seemed that her blood had shown a little clarity in the hybrid's mind, making him suddenly more loquacious. «I haven't summoned you to be teased», she hissed, crossing her arms.

«Then perhaps you should tell me why you did it, love. I don't have all day», he added, still glaring at the salt ring. He folded his hands behind his back, and then looked up to her with an impatient glare.

«I need your blood», Caroline began drily.

He merely raised an eyebrow, without reply nor letting imply anything from his expression. Despite his nature and his wild appearance, he was behaving in a rather civil way, considering that he had been locked up in some kind of hell for the last two thousand years.

His gaze made her uncomfortable, but she forced herself to continue. «Some kind of spell has been casted over the town, and this is making all the supernatural beings die. Vampires, werewolves… they have no escape. But it also happens that I know that your blood can cure them, so… I'm going to need some.»

Caroline had not expected his chuckle. «And why the hell should I willingly agree to this? Please do tell me, love, what makes you think that I would be interested.»

«Perhaps you'd like to regain your freedom», she retorted, a little baffled. Wasn't that enough?

«My freedom», he repeated. «Are you telling me, in whole honesty, that you'd be willing to release me for just a few drops of my blood? Do you really think that I'm such a fool?»

She rolled her eyes. «Look, I made you come here, I feed you, I'm not a liar. You can trust me…»

«Trust a witch? _Ah_.» He cockily shook his head, but he also seemed amused: she hadn't liked to be so abruptly interrupted. As most of the witches, she loved to be in control, and he was counting on being able to make her lose it. «Besides, we haven't even been properly introduced, how can I trust you?» He continued, clearly making fun of her.

Caroline grunted impatiently. She had known him for less than ten minutes and she wanted to strangle him already. «God! My name is Caroline, okay? Does it make you feel any better? Could we please move to some more serious topics?»

«You really are an impatient little thing, aren't you?» He couldn't help his smile. «Well then, _Caroline_, my name is Klaus, even if I guess you already knew it.»

«I thought your name were Niklaus», she contradicted. Oh God, had she evoked the wrong demon? This would have really been the last straw.

«That's the name my father gave me, actually, and I'm not quite fond of anything that concerns him», he quietly explained.

Caroline sighed. «Okay, Klaus, fine, whatever. Nice to meet you», she replied summarily. «Now, are you going to help me, or…?»

Klaus cocked his head slightly to one side, studying the girl with the voracious eye of a hawk looking for its prey. «You grant me that if I help you, then I'll be free? Permanently, no tricks involved?»

«Yes, I promise. Ah, and of course I need you to behave, as soon as you stay here in the surroundings. I want you not to hurt anyone in town, or our deal is off and I will hunt you until you are imprisoned again. And this time I will make sure to burn the spell that can set you free.» Caroline wasn't very good when it came to threatening somebody, but she was also a pretty powerful witch and she knew what she was capable of. Caroline knew that, alone or with Bonnie, maybe – just in case – she could have sent that hybrid back from where he came from. And if he didn't take her seriously, well, that was his problem.

«I must say I'm impressed, little witch. You've sure got some fire», he admitted with a small fleer.

Caroline pursed her lips, holding a triumphant smile. «So, do we have a deal?»

He did not answer immediately, but eventually he just nodded slowly. «Yes, I believe we do.»

Now it was her turn; she had to prove him that she could be trusted. Therefore, without losing sight of him not even for a moment, Caroline blew out the candles with an elegant wave of her hand, and with that, she put an end to the spell that imprisoned the hybrid.

At that point the situation was reversed abruptly, and not in her favor.

She was just in time to see his fangs flashed in the dark in a strange smile, before finding herself pressed against the trunk of a tree with the creature's hand tightened threateningly around her neck.

«Now, that's more like it», he whispered in her ear.

.

.

.

_Well, that was an unfortunate turn of events_.

If Bonnie could have seen her right now, she surely would have said something like _I told you so_, even if that was usually Caroline's favorite sentence. She swore silently, her eyes flickering frantically from side to side, desperately thinking of a way to freed herself, but his long and sharp claws were a major distraction.

«And here I thought we were becoming friends», she muttered with a little mocking smile – she couldn't help herself. His grip became tighter, which suggested her to stop fooling around and take over the reins of the situation. «Should I remind you the agreement you accepted only two seconds ago?»

«If you like; but that won't change the fact that you're at my mercy, now, and that I could easily kill you for your arrogance.» He seemed quite serious with his statement, and Caroline started to worry for the first time.

«You can't kill me! You drank my blood, and now we are linked. If anything bad happens to me, you too will suffer the consequences», she whispered with difficulty.

«_I am immortal! _I won't be killed by a witchy little thing like you are», he growled instead, tightening imperceptibly his fingers around her thin and delicate neck. His pupils were again black and dark as a deep abyss, and Caroline found herself unable to look away.

«I don't think you want to run the risk», she had the guts to dare him, and in spite of all he could not help but feel curiosity towards the girl. She had fire in those beautiful eyes, who watched him with rage and disappointment, and she did not seemed particularly frightened by him; this was something he needed to make up for.

«Why would have you done something so stupid as to unite me to you?» He asked, forcing himself to understand that witch. She was so different from the others, who had imprisoned him centuries ago, but after all she didn't really know who she was dealing with – besides, her courage could as well be naïve stupidity.

Caroline glared him. «Because, just as I told you earlier, you serve me to save my friends' lives, and right now this has a lot more value than my own safety», she retorted with more honesty than it was wise to use.

Though he had passed more time in exile than walking the Earth surface, Klaus had learned one or two things over the witch's ancestry: namely, that it was never safe to blindly trust them – and even though this witch was desperately trying to prove him wrong, he preferred to stay loyal to his idea. They had no qualms about exploiting and take advantage of the creatures that they believed to be inferior, if that would have meant achieving a higher purpose. They were arrogant and their faith made them behave as fierce religious extremists. They thought to have the Spirits of nature by their side and therefore to be untouchables, and often they were as ruthless as he himself was. They made a monster of him, they made him crave for blood for his own survivor, but for some reasons they managed not to take any blame for what they did to him.

_He would have not be manipulated once again._

As if she would have been capable of reading all those things in his eyes, Caroline's expression somehow softened. «Look, I know what my ancestors did to you, but I'm nothing like them. I promise I will show you the gratitude you deserve for helping me», she added with a very convincing tone.

He snapped back to reality, and with that he recovered the threatening attitude. «You take for granted that I'm an honorable man, who lives following some kind of code. That's very mindless of you», he teased, easing the pressure on her throat.

«I'm promising you freedom!»

«That's not what I want, love.»

Caroline seemed genuinely confused: his freedom was what they had discussed so far. Had she really misunderstood his intentions? «Name your price, then», she boldly offered, but as soon as the hurried words left her mouth, she realized her mistake: never look desperate in front of your enemies.

_You're doing the right thing, Caroline_, she tried to comfort herself. _It's for your friends_.

His little smile confirmed however her fears. «I want revenge.»

The blood drained quickly from her face, turning her pale. She guessed she should have seen that coming, but in spite of this she had hoped the contrary; and the worst part was, she couldn't go back on her word. «Revenge? Revenge for what?» Of course, she could easily imagine the answer, but she needed to hear it from him – she needed it so she could prepare herself for the worst yet to come.

«Do you need me to explain it to you? Can't you get it, love?»

«I really can't», she replied, hardly tolerant. She was not sure if her current inability to think rationally was due to a mild state of shock where she was almost certain to be sealed, or to the unexpected and embarrassing proximity of the hybrid. His warm breath sent strange shivers down her spine, the nature of which, however, preferred to remain ignorant to Caroline. It was not wise, nor advisable, to find attractive the creature that literally held her life in his hands.

It almost seemed that the hybrid had guessed her embarrassment and was pleased, because he pressed even more his body against Caroline's, making her fully aware of its heat and its consistency. She let out a moan that could easily be misunderstood, and she hated herself for that.

His expression suddenly became more condescending than she could bear. «Ah, sweet Caroline. You have made such a big mistake to release me from my prison, and soon you will realize it… But I could show some kindness and gratitude for you, after all.» His sinful lips poured a poison as sweet as honey against her ear; it was like a snake's hypnosis, she knew it was dangerous and yet she couldn't do anything to save herself. «So. All you have to do, love, is help me taking my revenge on the witches who put me there in the first place… I intend to make them pay for making my existence so miserable in the last two millennia.»

«Do you want a witch who helps you take down other witches? Where I come from this is called a conflict of interest», Caroline hissed, still in disbelief for what she had heard.

«I'd rather call it irony, love, it has a sound much more poetic.»

Caroline shook her head, regardless of scratching with his claws. «No, I can't accept. Anything else, please, but this.»

«It's a bit too late to go back on your word. Tick tock, little Caroline, time passes and the thread that holds your friends still tied to this earthly existence becomes more and more subtle. Do you want my blood? So I do not think you have much choice.»

She raised her eyes flooded with unshed tears upon him, looking so defeated and tormented to make him almost question his blackmail. The conflict that was taking place now behind those eyes was painful to watch, and yet Klaus did not look away, silently forcing her to make her choice.

«You're trying my patience», he warned her, in a dangerous tone.

«Fine! I'll do what you say», she spat angrily, biting her lower lip.

«You made the right choice, love. I'm sure your friends must be happy to have so much loyalty from you.»

Klaus let off his grip around her neck, stepping back a few steps and restoring her personal space along with the ability to breathe normally. Caroline watched him while he walked slowly away, kneeled to the ground and then took the jar who once had contained her blood. He stood up, turned around and, without looking away from her, he bit his own wrist and let his dark blood dropping on the little glass bottled.

«This is my part of the deal, love», he said with a mischievous smile, approaching and then handed it to her. «How do you prefer that I collect yours?»

«Wait for me at my house, I'm sure you can follow your hound nose», she replied, resignedly but with a bitter hint of insult. «After bringing your blood to my friends, and assured myself that it works, I'll join you and we'll decide what to do.»

His smile opened into a feral grin.

«Fantastic.»

.

.

.

* * *

**Final notes.**

I want to thank for the umpteenth time my dear Alyssa [know on Tumblr as — **theinevitabilityofus**] for being my Beta, and of course my sweet Hana [on Tumblr as — **frostyklaroline**] for convincing me to write this story! I really hope you'll enjoy reading it just as much as I do writing it! :)

See you soon in the next chapter - for anything else you can find me on Tumblr as **his-beloved-mrs-mikaelson**. :)

xo xo xo

_Giulia_

* * *

The opening quote is taken from the pilot (1x01) of the TV series "Grimm".

I've never seen "American Horror Story", but for the record I took from there the term of "Supreme", as to indicate the leader of a coven.

Eventually, in the role of Guest Star we have the Book of Shadows, previously seen in "Charmed". :D


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes. **Hi guys! Thanks a lot for giving this story a chance, I really could not believe so many people would have read it and also would have found it interesting. So thank you very much for your nice reviews, and thanks to the lovely readers that have decided to favorite and follow my little experiment. *_*

Finally, a huge thank you to my Beta Alyssa [**theinevitabilityofus**] for editing the chapter – and for doing a wonderful job!

That said, I'll leave you to the read – and I hope this chapter will be a bit juicier than the latter, lol. For anything else, questions or chats, you can always find me on Tumblr [**his-beloved-mrs-mikaelson**]. :)

Enjoy the reading!

xo xo xo

_Giulia_.

* * *

**Chapter 2**

**.**

**.**

_Then she began to weep bitterly, and said, 'What can a poor girl like me do now?_

_._

_._

Driving her way back to Mystic Falls, Caroline couldn't stop the feeling of sickness that had gripped the pit of her stomach. She continued to look over at the little bottle on the seat next to her. It contained a darker blood in it as it glowed under the digital lights of the dashboard and she kept glancing back, as if the simple act of watching it could have been capable of reassuring her. Now that that _monster_ was nowhere to be seen, Caroline felt the sudden fear and the anguish she unconsciously held back while she was with him, and the realization of what she had done hit her so badly that her entire body started to shiver.

There were no way at all she would go to Bonnie – in that case, in fact, her plan would have been suddenly discovered immediately, and instead she wanted to leave the city as long as no one knew what she had done. She couldn't even go to Carol because, honestly, what was she going to tell her, that eventually the mayor wouldn't have told to her mother? There was nothing she could tell without lying, since telling the truth would have brought her just in front of the relentless judgment of the coven. Besides, the other witches clearly didn't give a damn about saving vampires and werewolves, and consequentially Caroline's plan would have undoubtedly been punished.

She glanced at her watch. There were four hours until the end of the night shift for her mother, and by then there should have been already at least fifty miles of road between her and Mystic Falls. She wanted to cry. Where was she going to go, where she might have to hide? She had never crossed the borders of Virginia, not alone anyway, and certainly not because she was running away. Reaching her father in California did not seem a good idea at all - not to mention that that would have been the first place where they would have gone looking for her. With a sarcastic snort she even found herself thinking that maybe, if she was lucky, Klaus would have killed her long before the punishment of the coven laid upon her.

When she began to see the soft lights of the town, she slightly pressed the accelerator, having now well understood where she had to go: the Salvatore's boarding house. It seemed to be the more obvious solution. She would give Klaus's blood to Elena, and as she had already said to the hybrid, she would remain there long enough to check that the cure took effect, then she would instruct her friend to give that blood to Stefan, Damon, and then bring it to Tyler. Although it would break her heart, she couldn't do it personally. At that point, she still would have had three hours to go home, write a note to her mother, gather her things and leave as quickly as possible. Sure, she still had a score to settle with Klaus, but she hoped to fend it quickly.

The wind was now howling quietly, as if the thing – whatever it was – who threatened her friends' lives was now slowly going away.

However, when Caroline stopped her car in the front yard of the boarding house, all her courage seemed to disappear along with that terrible wind. She sat alone in the darkness, breathing deeply, holding tighter the bottle filled with Klaus's blood. Now, it all just seemed terribly _wrong_. Before the spell, she had thought that the consequences would be so far and distant – she had thought she could just go away with that, harmless, since all she had done was in the name of a greatest good, of her friends' sake – but right now, she could feel the burden of her actions astounding her. Her ears were filled with the voices of the witches who she had just ignored back in the woods – _did you think they would have let you use their magic without making you pay the price?_ It was a hoarse bruise; she knew it that that would never abandon her.

_You freed a monster, child._ Caroline could almost swear it has been her grandmother's voice she had heard the most. _You dared playing with fire, but you should not have touched it to know it burns._

Other voices had covered her granny's, voices full of anger, disappointment, reprimand, but Caroline's will had been stronger, and somehow she had managed to complete the hex. Bonnie had always told her not to mess with the creatures trapped on the Other Side, and the actual events were proving she was right about letting the dead rest as long with their powers. Too bad she could undo not what she had done now.

Through the burgundy curtains of the boarding house, Caroline saw the soft lights of the lamps filtering and stretching over the wet grass of the courtyard. Her boots crunched the gravel of the driveway, making clear her presence at the fine hearing of the three vampires who were fighting for their own safety - Caroline doubted that even being able to do so, the three would have prayed. They just didn't seem the types.

The front door was carelessly open, so she went in easily. The silence that greeted her, however, did not portend anything good - was it possible that everything she had done was useless, and that it was now too late?

"Elena?" She called worried, heading directly toward the stairs. "Stefan, Damon?" Not receiving any response she quickened her pace, almost running and jumping up the steps two at a time. By now, she had spent so much time in the Salvatore's board to be familiar with the location of the various rooms: the long hallway upstairs faced a dozen doors, and in the wall at the end of the lobby, she could see the spiral staircase that lead to Stefan's room. Caroline ignored it and pointed one door without hesitation.

She found herself in a large bedroom, all wood and big windows and Egyptian cotton sheets; precious rugs covered the parquet, so that her steps were mercifully muffled as she approached the bed. Caroline could almost smell the stench of death and disease that hung in the air and that aromatic candles couldn't cover – it made her remember the time she witnessed the slow and ineluctable decline of Rose, a nice hundred-year-old vampire lethally bitten by a werewolf from Tyler's pack. In her last moments, Rose had had some terrible hallucinations, which pushed her to attack and almost kill Elena – but back then, there were Stefan and Damon ready to save her like knights in a shining armor. If fate had caused similar collateral effects also to that plague, then there would be no one to protect Caroline by three angry and ferocious vampires longing for blood, beyond of course her own magic. Although she would preferred not to use any magic against her friends, thank you very much.

Trying not to dwell too much on such dark thoughts, Caroline reached the bed and let her eyes rest on her best friend. Her skin, already become clearer after her transformation, was now pale and almost translucent, like parchment, and her long black hair, having lost their usual luster, seemed thin wisps of straw. Dark shadows circled her eyes, and her lips were cracked as if she had been drinking salt water. Caroline had seen those characteristics only in dead vampires, and the sight of it truly terrified her.

"Elena, can you hear me? I'm Care…" She whispered, placing a hand on her shoulder and shaking it gently.

The absence of breathing and heartbeat was part of the normality of being un-dead, while it was not the fact that Elena had not jumped up as soon as she had heard someone enter the house. Usually a vampire had no grasp of sneaking in its place of rest – it made no difference whether it was a friend or a foe – so the lack of any reactions from Elena or the two Salvatore brothers had made her clear the seriousness of the situation, and the urgent need to remedy. Therefore, without waiting for a sign of life from her friend, Caroline took the bottle with Klaus's blood and unscrewed the cap, and then bring it closer to Elena's lips. She poured a few drops of it into her mouth – she saw her skin greedily absorb that blood – and after a few anxious seconds Elena's eyes widened sharply. The vampire breathed brusquely as if she had just come back from the grave, and if Caroline was not a witch, she would have probably been scared to death.

As soon as she had regained control, Elena tried to speak. "Caroline… Is that you?" Her hoarse voice came out hard, and sounded like a hundred fingernails scraping on a blackboard.

"Yes, Elena, it's me. Are you okay? How are you feeling?" Caroline asked quickly, fighting back her tears. _She had made it, thank God!_

"As if I'd just been run over by a train", she answered, moaning as she tried to sit up. "What's happened?"

"I don't exactly know how to answer this, try asking Bonnie." Caroline attempted a smile, and then hugged her tighter, tearing her a surprised groan. "Oh God, for a second I really thought I've lost you for good!"

"Yeah, for a second I thought it was the end of me too", Elena moaned, rubbing her forehead. "I'm not entirely used to being immortal, but I guessed that a flu could not beat me down."

Caroline shook her head. "I suppose it's been more than a flu, Elena", she admitted. "I don't know precisely what happened, but I promise you, we'll figure it out and…"

Her words were abruptly interrupted by some terrible and whining noise, for which it was not necessary having the benefit of a supernatural hearing. The two girls instantly fell silent and strained their ears, looking deeply concerned and even a bit frightened; in the new formed quiet, the noise became more recognizable and both Elena and Caroline distinguished an animal yelps.

"What is… what is this noise? Is there a dog, somewhere?" She whispered.

Suddenly Elena covered her mouth with a hand, as if she had just remembered something very important. "Oh God, I think it's Tyler…"

"Tyler?" She didn't know whether feel relieved or worried about that unexpected news – sure, she was afraid that once Tyler would have been healed, he'd never accepted to just let her go, and that was why she hadn't gone to his house in the first place. Now here they were, though, and she didn't want to make Elena suspicious. "What is he doing, here?"

"His mother brought him here a few hours ago, she said he was becoming too violent and she was scared as hell. Damon and Stefan hardly managed to lock him in the basement, before collapsing", she explained slowly, remembering the hustle and bustle that had been in the boarding house only a short time before.

Caroline didn't give herself the time to digest the news. "Do you have a syringe I can borrow?" She asked quickly, feeling suddenly a large amount of anguish graving on her shoulders. Tyler's howling wasn't exactly reassuring, and she was afraid that Klaus, not seeing her in the next twenty minutes, could came looking for her without thinking about the consequences.

"Um, yes, I think we do." Elena simply stood up and approached the late Victorian desk, opening drawers and rummaging in bulk. "Damon usually keeps some spare syringe just in case, you know, you're never too careful… He fills them with vervain… You want to inject Tyler with that blood, don't you? And by the way, whose blood is it?"

"Oh, um, I don't know, the other witches gave it to me." She answered in a rather quickly. "Do you think is it dangerous getting near Tyler while he's hallucinating? I'd rather not use my magic against him…"

"I don't think he would ever hurt you, Care, not even while he's like that. I mean, I personally would be afraid, but, you know how it works, his bite could kill me. This time irreversibly", Elena finished with a little defusing smile, turning to Caroline and handling her the syringe. "Here."

"Thanks." Caroline slid the needle of the syringe into the bottle and she withdrew a few drops of Klaus's blood, taking care to leave enough antidote for Stefan and Damon. "Okay, now you take care of our Salvatore's brothers, and I go to Tyler. Hurry up, Elena, and make sure that they've drunk enough to heal."

If she had stopped to think that those were the last words she would say to Elena – her awful goodbye – she would probably cry. Therefore, she simply threw that notion in the back of her mind, where she could have found it even later.

The two girls divided on opposite ways and Caroline ran as fast as she could down the stairs, towards the basement. It was just like the way she remembered it from the last time she went there – back when Elena had turned off her humanity because of the brutal accident that had caused Jeremy's sudden death.

Trying to focus her thoughts on her boyfriend instead of lingering on those sad memories, Caroline came down the narrow and poorly lit stairs, following the scanty corridor until she reached the cells. The acrid smell of mold and dampness that permeated the stone walls crept insinuating into her nostrils, making her violently sneeze. Certainly, it had elapsed decades since the last time someone had purified those environments. As she approached her destination, anyway, the yelps and howls became stronger and sharper, and she could even discern the sound of claws scratching the wall.

An inevitable shiver shook her from head to toe. She loved Tyler, God only knew how much, but she had a damn fear of his wolf form – he literally lost his mind when he turned, he didn't recognize anyone, and now that he was probably hallucinating Caroline feared that he could even hurt her, as Elena put it.

Her fears of being in front of a wolf instead of her human boyfriend became real once she stopped near the cell in which he had been locked. Inside, Tyler was growling and snarling like an enraged animal; his jaws snapping menacingly and his paws scratching the floor. He was far away from the image of loving boy that she was used to see. Preparing herself mentally, Caroline took a deep breath and then opened the little chink to look inside the cell, just that little bit that would have allowed her to do a little magic that would have prevented Tyler to harm her. When the last stranger word came out from her mouth, the big wolf became silent, and raised his yellow eyes upon her.

At that point, Caroline felt herself safe enough to enter the cell. "Tyler?" She called him in a tender whisper, forcing a smile. "Tyler, it's me. I don't want to hurt you, I promise."

The werewolf intently watched her slow movements, looking at her suspiciously, as she drew near to the point of being within his reach – to the point that the chains would have not serve to protect her, if he had decided to attack. His ears erect gave the glimpse that he was fully alert, yet he did not utter a sound when Caroline crouched down beside him and stretched a hand out to stroke a point between the neck and the ear, sinking into the soft and thick fur. She caressed him slowly, and when Tyler squinted relaxed, Caroline finally let out a relieved sigh.

"Yeah, like this. Good boy", she smiled, soughing. Without stopping to cuddle him, Caroline picked up the syringe and injected him between the front legs, just right on the heart.

The wolf goggled, but he didn't have time to realize what had happened. He simply fell with a whimper on his side, and under the amazed eyes of Caroline, his thick dark hair gave way to a normal human skin, sallow, beaded with sweat and covered with chills. That sight of him, so helpless and shattered at her feet, tore her a gasp, but she forced herself to maintain control – she couldn't afford to waste any more time.

He groaned, trying to turn his back to the floor and so to face her, but she forestalled him quickly. "I'm so sorry, Tyler, but you need to rest", she whispered, feeling terribly guilty. She simply cropped his face in her hands and murmured a few stranger words – he was still confused and seemed not to understand what was about to happen – and then she watched his eyelids tremble and close taking him to a dreamless sleep.

Feeling her heart breaking, Caroline kissed his warm lips one last time before leaving the Salvatore mansion without looking back.

.

.

Caroline parked in the driveway in front of her house and turned off the car. She stood still, her forehead resting on her hands that violently gripped the steering wheel._ That's it, _she thought sadly. _That's the end. I'm not going to see my friends, or my mom, anytime soon… And I've a freaking hybrid inside my house who's waiting for me. If I'd check on my horoscope, this morning, perhaps my day would have been totally different._

When she found the courage to get out of the car, the feeling of being watched became overbearing, and when she looked up to the porch Caroline saw a shadow coming off the darkness and move toward the light, coming closer to her. Klaus was standing by the front door waiting, his hands behind his back in an old-fashioned position of authority, impressive and scary as, Caroline supposed, must have been his Viking ancestors.

"I cannot enter", he said with a resentful tone. "There's too much magic around here, it's suffocating", he added, his eyes narrowed and watched as the girl, with a bunch of keys in her hand, approached the door.

She looked at him briefly, and then shrugged. "You need an invitation as any other vampire. My magic has nothing to do with that. Good, that means that you can't harm my friends."

"I know many ways to hurt someone, love, without necessarily entering into their homes", it was his insidious reply, that didn't worry her as it should have. What was she supposed to be afraid of, now? The worst had already happened. "And I'm not like any other vampire", he added venomously, almost insulted by that.

"Ah, no? And what would you be then?" Caroline asked, crossing her arms over her chest. The door was wide open, but she did not invite him to come in - she wanted to make him understand that she was still in control of the situation, for what little that could matter.

He seemed having noticed that, and he grinned menacingly. "I'm a different kind of monster. Half vampire, half werewolf… Back in my times, people used to call me _hybrid_, but they were too frightened to dare saying that to my face. Unless, of course, they wanted a sword through their chests or my fangs buried in their necks", he replied with some kind of pride, watching her coyly.

"Well, hybrid, I'm not afraid of you. We have a deal, and that makes us even", Caroline said with a satisfied smile; she had the impression of holding him in the palm of her hand, or at least of having some influence, as a witch - and God only knew that she was going to take advantage of that.

Klaus was clearly not happy about having to stay even shortly in the lowest rung of the social class. He was of course used to be in a position of command, and it seemed that his long imprisonment hadn't change that. "You do have some nerve, to talk to me like this", he hissed, dangerously stepping forward.

Despite her alleged neglect, Caroline sensed the risk and she raised a hand in a giving up sign. "Okay, easy there. We've already had this argument, I don't need another competition to see which one of us is the most badass. Would you please come inside? I'd rather not having all the neighborhood chit-chatting about me taking some stranger at home." _Not that this would matter anymore, once I'm far away from Mystic Falls_, she thought bitterly, walking inside without waiting for him.

The door closed a few seconds later behind her back, and a shiver went down her spine while she realized she was alone with that demon. She even gave him complete access to her home, and that was not a thing she could ever reversed – _God, Caroline, how stupid have you become?_

She turned on the lights of the hall and went to her room without saying a single word, positive that he would follow her anyway. Which he did: his presence was tangible and suffocating behind her, like a dangerous sword of Damocles made of flesh and bones.

Actually, she didn't know why she had told him to meet her at her house – the rush was a bad counselor, after all. _And she shouldn't have forgotten the feeling of his rough fingers around her throat, either_. She tried hard to give a sense to her actions and her lack of slyness: he said that she would have to pay the price for his help, but he hadn't specified the _how_. He also said that all he wanted was revenge, but how _exactly_ Caroline would have fit in such a big picture?

She didn't want to look afraid or helpless – no doubt he would take advantage of any breach in her armor – but unfortunately that was precisely how she was feeling.

Right now, by the way, she had a much more urgent effort to accomplish; which was leaving the town behind before anyone could become aware of her uncanny absence.

It was a cowardly thing to do, she knew it, but she would have to leave anyway – leave Mystic Falls to go to college, and all that jazz. So what did it matter if she just anticipated the date?

_Yeah, keep telling yourself this story._

She took from under her bed the suitcase that she was supposed to bring to Whitmore. In her freaking control mania, she had already filled it with some clothes and other personal belongings – her hair straightener, a few cosmetic bags, underwear – but now that she was planning her escape, she threw in also her grimoire, a picture of her with her mother, some bags of herbs in case she had to do some emergency spell, and her laptop. She also rummaged in every drawer looking for cash, since she couldn't use her credit cards in order to avoid to be traced, once her mother would realized she had escaped.

Klaus watched her frantic bustle with genuine curiosity, sitting quietly on the edge of her bed after having explored the whole place with eager eyes. "Things were certainly different, back in my days", he stated all of a sudden. "We lived in a very simpler and less chaotic way, and women used to cover themselves more. What year is it, anyway?"

Caroline decided to ignore the little sideswipe about her clothing. It was July, for God's sake, she was perfectly allowed to wear jeans shorts and sleeveless top. "It's 2014. Twenty-first century?" Seeing that those dates didn't seem to ring a bell on the hybrid's mind, she sighed and asked: "What is it the last thing you remember, before being imprisoned? Where were you?"

"Oh, I've been in many places, especially after the curse. Rome, Egypt, Greece…" His eyes seemed lost in a distant place, as he tried to capture what was probably the fragment of a bittersweet memory. "But I was born in _Britannia_, in a village lucky enough to be hidden in a difficult terrain, which allowed us to stay as far away as possible from the Roman depredations."

She pretended that all his historical background wasn't _that _interesting. "Wow, so you're pretty ancient."

He smirked. "And you're saying that, because…?"

"As I just said, it's 2014. So that makes you something like two thousand years old", she replied, failing to completely hide the awe. _I'm talking to a damned fossil_, she found herself thinking. _I know, I've vampires as friends, but still… damn._

"It's a very long time…"

"Yes, it is." She interrupted, showing despite herself a little sympathy.

"…to remain imprisoned without any contact with other human beings, or with the outside world."

She stopped to fill her suitcase and stared at him, worried, all sympathies instantly forgotten. "Is that a recrimination? Because, you know, I have nothing to do with what a handful of dead witches have done to you centuries ago."

"I know, love, it was only a mere matter of fact."

She looked at him thoughtfully and even suspiciously, and then returned to adjust her luggage without answering him. Her silence did not mean that her mind wasn't processing his discourse, though.

"But, if I may point out something", she in fact began after a while. "Perhaps you did something which made you deserve such a treatment. Perhaps time has made you forget how things really happened, and you clothed with the figure of the victim without deserving it. Never thought of this? You've had plenty of time to do an examination of conscience."

He clearly deigned no attention to her words, too arrogant even to consider the idea of being wrong. "I've also had enough time to plot my revenge."

"Yeah, well, about that. I'm glad you took the argument, because as you may notice, I'm leaving, so I suggest you to ask me right now what it is, exactly, that you need from me, and then we could both go to our separate ways."

"That won't be necessary, since I'm leaving with you."

Those words were so unexpected that Caroline literally froze, before turning to face him with a dangerous look on her face – as to dare him to repeat such a ridiculous suggestion. "I beg your pardon? I don't think I heard you well."

"Your hearing is perfectly fine, love." _God, she was starting to hate the way his tongue enveloped the word 'love' – it showed an intimacy that she never gave him_. "See, what I need is a witch, and you happen to be one. I don't need anything you could give to me, except for your time."

"I still don't follow."

"Don't play pretend, love, you're smarter than that." Klaus sighed, watching her through his awfully long lashes. "I need a witch to find another one, so we're leaving together. It isn't hard to understand."

"But that's ridiculous! And it goes far beyond my debt", she retorted incredulously. "I can do a location spell right here and now, it won't take more than five minutes, and once you'll know where is the witch you're looking for, my debt is paid. You can't come with me, you don't _actually_ need me. Let me take some candles and a map, so we can resolve the situation straightway…"

"No." He put an abrupt end to her hasty ravings. "My terms are not negotiable. You'll do as I say, so get ready and stop wasting precious time."

She would have wanted to be able to incinerate him with her eyes, but unfortunately that was a kind of a dark magic that she hadn't mastered yet. But she did glare him, and she violently closed her suitcase just to show him that she was far from being satisfied by their negotiations.

"Whatever", she coldly blurted.

.

Caroline felt the anger rising inside her like a crackling fire. She couldn't believe that she had allowed him to threaten her inside her own house, and above all she hated that she had simply accepted his requests as if they were good for her. _Nothing was good in that damned story!_

She could hear the muffled sound of Klaus's footsteps behind her, while she was walking towards the dining room with one arm occupied by a jacket and the other hand pulling the trolley.

She could also hear the thunder of her own heartbeat resounding in her ears, and she had to take a seat to avoid a swooning. She couldn't have a panic attack right now – it should have waited until she left the town.

She ought to do one last thing before leaving.

With a pen clutched in her hand, Caroline found herself for the first time at a loss for words. What was expected of you to write to your mother when you intend to leave her without further explanation? She fought back the tears that were threatening to go out, took a deep breath and, trying not to shake the hand, she scribbled on the white paper. Having to do such an intimate thing under Klaus's eyes, however, didn't make it any easier.

_Mom, _

_I'm so sorry. I'll be away for a while... maybe a little more. Don't hate me, please - just know that what I did, I did it for my friends. Don't try to look for me, I will do anything I can to be untraceable. Sorry I'm letting you handle the coven alone. This isn't actually a goodbye, I'll come back, eventually – after arranging everything. I love you, more than I can express, and I will miss you every day. _

_Caroline._

With tears in her eyes, she put the pen on the table, and then she took her phone from her pocket and left it nearby, switched off – there was nothing else she could do. When she turned to Klaus her expression had changed, and it was with that determined look that Caroline came out of her house with the firm intention of not returning for a long time.

It was something like half past four in the morning, and yet she didn't seem to feel the need to sleep. Probably, the adrenaline coursing through her veins would have remained in circulation still for a while. She was counting on it, actually, because she had a long trip to do.

.

.

.

"You've been quite silent lately."

"I didn't understand that our deal included conversations", she replied coldly, without taking her eyes from the road. As to show her that the whole situation actually could get even worse, it had started to rain, and the wipers squeaked rhythmically while caressing the glass of the car; she could have turned on the radio, but she wasn't really in the mood. She would have gladly had some time alone just to put some clarity into her thoughts or to commiserate herself, but her passenger seemed not to want allow it.

"No, but a good conversation could be distracting, and also useful", Klaus continued, his warm eyes pointed on her. "By start you could tell me where exactly we are going."

"I haven't decided yet. I just wanted to go away from Mystic Falls, and right now our biggest concern must be finding some place where to spend the night."

The car became silent again, but the hybrid didn't seem to get the subtle wish of Caroline of not to talk. "I'd like to wear more proper clothes, if that won't bother you", he stated.

She looked away from the road just for two seconds, staring at him with a suddenly worried and judgmental look. _Well, they were not even close to Halloween, after all_… "Mh, yeah, sure. Certainly you won't go unnoticed dressed like that", she agreed, before turning her attention back to driving. "I'll find you something, as soon as we reached a service station."

The monotonous noise of the wipers was beginning to irritate her.

_God, it had never rained so badly during summer._

"I don't recognize these lands", he changed the subject, moving his glare outside the window.

Caroline sighed, resigned. "Of course you don't, this is America. It has been discovered a long way after your imprisonment."

"A brand new land?" She didn't understand whether he sounded more impressed or sad. "I've really missed a lot, haven't I", he added in a low tone. "I wish to learn more about this… world. Do tell me everything you know, if you don't mind."

"Actually, I mind. Look, no offense, but I really don't want to have an historical conversation with you. Or with anyone else," she clarified. "I need to think, okay? So please, leave me alone." And with that, Caroline turned on the radio and let some pop music fill the car.

_This is what happens when you act on instinct, Caroline._ Her mom's voice seemed to echo in her head far too clearly. _What have I always told you? Think first, act later. Magic is a fine and complex art; you can't just do some abracadabra and then wait for something to happen. You have to know that before – you're not ten anymore._

Too bad that, when it came to her witchy blood and her friends, Caroline easily used to forgot her innate mania to plan everything. Someone was burning? She would just throw herself into the fire without grabbing even a fire extinguisher. It was stupid, it was foolish, it was senseless – but she would have done it anyway.

Well, now the consequences were biting her pretty ass.

.

They arrived to the service station two hours and a half later. The sky was already starting to enlighten in the soft tones of dawn, and the rain was now subtle lines of water, which fell on the ground creating a thick and grey mist. Luckily, there wasn't a lot of traffic – and she already had enough of Klaus's comments and never-ending questions about trucks, cars, traffic lights and road signs, so that the neon sign of the service station had been welcomed like a blessing.

Caroline drove the car in the almost empty parking, before turning it off and leaning over the back seat to grab her bag. Almost at the same time, Klaus made a gesture as if he was about to get out of the car – his hand already on the handle – and then she turned so quickly towards him that her long curls fluttered around her face.

"Ha ha ha, where are you going? You'll wait in the car", she instructed him seriously, waving a finger against him. "There are people there, humans, who can easily freak out if they see some kind of Viking covered in oddments of blood in the park yard. They could call the police, and since I'm a sheriff's daughter on the run, I'd rather avoid that. Do I make myself clear?"

Klaus closed the door with an arrogant swirl of eyes. "Perfectly clear, love. But what if you're planning to run from me too?"

She scoffed, impatiently. "Look, I'm too tired to play this game with you. Just wait for me here, okay? We're on the same boat, and you could use a little trust. I'm getting a room."

That did not take long. The boy at the reception made her sign a few pages, asked for her ID – Caroline seriously hoped that none of her friends would thought of looking for her in that god-forsaken place, or else her escaping run would have been as easy to find as an elephant in a crystal shop – and then let her pay in cash, which was the only thing she didn't want to compromise.

With the key in her hand, Caroline went back to the car to take Klaus and finally going to take possession of their room – yes, she ignored the disoriented and annoyed look in his face, since she couldn't think it was possible for him to look like a lost and abandoned puppy. _She needed to hate him, not to commiserate him. _Dragging her trolley, Caroline reached the door number 12 and, under the watchful and impatient gaze of Klaus, she put the key in the lock and stepped inside. Her hand wandered blindly in search of the switch on the wall, and when she had found it, the yellowish light of lamps lit with a gentle 'pop'. At the center of the room, there was a double bed, two bedside tables, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers, and on the back wall, there was what had to be the bathroom. The decor was Spartan and very basic – the lavender flowers on the tapestry were the only glint of color in the whole room – but for one night, it could have been good. Oh, there was also an armchair - Caroline would have made herself sure that the hybrid slept there.

"So", she muttered, placing her suitcase on one side and closing the door with a flick of her hips. "There should be a bathroom down there, if you want to take a shower... I'm going out again, I saw there is a small supermarket next door. I'm starving."

"Yes, me too", the hybrid replied, turned around to look at her.

"Wait, no, don't even think about it. Just try to hold your bloodlust a little more; we can't alarm the humans, okay?"

"I have already withheld enough my thirst. Two thousand years, remember?"

She simply shrugged. "Yeah, so what harm could do to you a couple of more hours?"

"I warn you, little witch, you don't want to test my patience and my restraint", he hissed, taking a step in her direction. "It would be bloody easy for me to forget our deal and feed on you. I said before that I need a witch, but you showed me that the world is bigger, nowadays, and I'm sure as hell there would be plenty of people like you, or better more compliant, willing to help me. You're not an irreplaceable pawn."

Her eyes betrayed her indignation. "Wow, thank you for your encouraging speech", she replied, unable to bit her tongue any longer. Really, how dare he talk to her like that, after all she had sacrificed for him? "I'm sure you have a lot of other mean things ready to tell, but in case you don't, I'll leave you some time on your own to figure them out. Now I'm going to the market, and _you-stay-inside_."

By now, Caroline had learn that he didn't like to be treated like this – he couldn't bear to be told what to do, especially – she guessed – by someone like her. He was an overgrown spoiled child, but Caroline knew exactly how to behave around one.

So she ignores his black eyes and the glimpse of his fangs, when he was about to reply. "You should be nicer to me, love. You don't want to have me as your enemy", he hissed, in a childish tone that did not really suit him and that ruined the subtle menace.

Caroline just rolled her eyes, and left without adding a word.

.

.

A lame song that Caroline didn't recognize was playing from the radio speakers. The white neon made the store sterile and uncomfortable – or perhaps her inner feelings were influencing the place – and even the salesclerk was chewing a gum and reading some newspaper with a sleepy face and a clear desire of being anywhere else. She approached the counter and placed her shopping on it: takeaway food, maps of the nearer states, and some modern clothes for Klaus, which consisted in a pair of jeans, sneakers, socks and two black t-shirts. She didn't know what a man from two thousand years ago would have liked in matter of fashion – and, truth be told, she haven't even mind to ask, especially after their latter spat – so she just picked something that Tyler would have easily wore. Grabbing her purse, Caroline mentally took note of everything she was spending for Klaus, since eventually, she had the intentions of make him pay her back – sure, she had accepted to help him, but that didn't mean that she had to babysit him for free, right?

"It's $72,50, hun", the boy said, handing her some bags. Caroline decided to ignore his tone – two days ago she would probably gave him a goddamn headache for calling her 'hun', but now she wasn't in the mood – and she simply took out the cash from her purse. _Klaus owed me 72 damned dollars and fifty cents_, she thought bitterly, trying to figure out how much money she had left. God, math has never been her strong point.

She returned to their room with her hands full of grocery bags. When she went inside, lowering the handle with her elbow and pushing it with her behind, Caroline found herself facing an absolute careless hybrid who wandered around the room in all his glorious nakedness.

"Oh my God!" She screamed, snapping shut her eyes. "Klaus! Cover yourself!"

He turned towards her with an arched eyebrow and an irrespective smirk. "What is it the problem, love? Have you never seen a naked man before?"

_His ability of behaving as if he hadn't just threatened her with death was behind her comprehension._

"Oh God, that's _so_ not the point", she hissed, placing the bag on the floor and almost running blindfold to the bathroom looking for a towel. Then, with a hand firmly posed on her eyes, she handed it to him. "Here, take it. And try to revise your concept of modesty, while you're stuck with me!"

Caroline heard him sighing resigned, and she persisted in keeping her eyes closed until he told her he was decent. "Good", she sighed in relief. She couldn't help but checking if he was really presentable – and he was, well, at least now she could look at him without blushing – and ignoring his mischievous look Caroline went to unpack the grocery bags. She did notice, though, how the shower seemed to have returned him to an appearance more human, less "I'm-that-scary-monster-parents-tell-their-children-about-at-night". His long hair, now cleaned, fell dripping on his large and marmoreal shoulders, and Caroline could even guess their color – a dirty ash blond; his skin appeared pale, as a vampire, especially now that the dried blood of old wounds by then healed had been cleaned up. His whole appearance screamed danger - _forewarned is forearmed, Caroline_ – and yet the fact that he was standing almost completely naked in front of her, with just a white towel around his waist, let her believe that she was, at least for the moment and despite all that had been said, safe.

_Well, shit. Now it would have taken a while to forget the scene._

"I bought some food, maybe it can help you retain your thirst", she stated, putting some sandwiches and drinks on the table. "Here is what we're going to do: we eat, we rest, and we talk. You haven't told me yet what you need me for, and I want to know it now. We've been dancing around the subject for too long."

Waiting for him to speak, Caroline started to prepare a little concoction of salt, chopped petals of valerian and sage powder, which then put on windows' sills and on the threshold of the room.

"More salt?" Klaus asked crossing his arms, not at all satisfied to witness another spell. "Don't you have had enough of this, love?"

"It's a simple precaution", she explained in a low voice. She murmured some Latin words while she sealed door and windows, and only once she had finished, she turned again towards Klaus. "It will prevent my coven to find us. As long as they're unable to do a proper location spell, I'll be safe and I can fulfill my part of our deal."

Klaus nodded. "You really thought of everything. I'm impressed."

"Yeah, perks of being a kind of a control freak. I like to have things well planned", she merely replied. Caroline then rubbed her hands to wipe the excess salt, took a seat on a chair, grabbed a packet of biscuits and gestured to Klaus that she was ready to listen. "Okay so, let's go back to business. What kind of revenge are you plotting against the witches?"

The hybrid sat down in turn, without touching any food. "It's quite simple: I want to see them dead. All of them."

The tragic and disarming simplicity of that answer, though she definitively should have seen it coming, made her go through a cookie. It was the kind of thing that just a psychopath would have said. "What-dead? Are you _insane_?" She coughed slightly. "You can't just kill all of us because some billions of years ago one unique coven put you away. What kind of revenge is that? Not to forget, they're already dead by now."

"I know it. I saw them on the Other Side, occasionally during the centuries. They avoided me, of course, but I could still hear their voices, their curses, their mocking whispers. They never left me alone, they taunted me, and I'm going to pay them back with the same coin. You should know how it works, love: they see everything we do here, but they can't do anything to stop us. What I mean is, since I can't do nothing to the true responsible for my defeat, I'm going to find every single one of their descendants, and I will show them what suffering is. And you, my dear, you will help me."

Caroline couldn't believe her own ears. How could he be so arrogant as to ask her to bring death among her own people? And more important, what made him believe that it would be so easy to succeed in his aim? For the little he knew, in fact, Caroline could betray him: he had no guarantee that she would abide by her word, and frankly, she thought it was not his thing to blindly trusting someone – a witch, nothing less.

At this point, she realized that the only way to being able to devise a backup plan to warn at least the other covens, was to indulge him as long as it was possible. _I'm not exactly a psychiatrist, but I think that's how one is supposed to behave around psychopaths._

"I can't believe I'm really asking this… but how, on earth, would you manage to do that?" She asked eventually, hoping that that whole nightmare wouldn't last long.

"We're going to use this", he declared, pulling out of nowhere an ancient necklace, whose bone pendant had some exotic carvings that Caroline could not decipher. They seemed runes, but they were eroded by time and that was all she could say about that. Probably he hid it somewhere in his old clothes.

She reached out a hand to take it, and as soon as the pendant encountered her skin, she felt an unpleasant shiver that struck her from head to toe, as if an ice cube had just slipped down her back. She gasped, confused, and then she began to study it in detail up close. "Wow. This stuff should stay in a museum. How old is it?"

Klaus watched the jewel as if it was responsible of all the miseries that had ever happened to him. _If he lingered in that memory, he could almost see it dangle between another witch's tanned breasts…_ He frowned, chasing that unwanted image out of his mind. "Old enough to have some value. It belonged to the witch who, after turning me in such a beast, decided that I was a mistake to be rid of."

"Does this witch have a name?" She asked, munching on her biscuits.

"People used to call her Qetsiyah."

Caroline frowned. "That sounds familiar..."

"I'm not surprised. Let me tell you a story, would you?" He asked, not really expecting an answer. "She was one hell of a witch, Qetsiyah, very powerful, reckless, and quite beautiful. She was a Greek noblewoman who travelled with an impressive caravan of people who call themselves healers - of course, almost all of them practiced magical arts. She came to our village, God knows how she found us, and she started practicing her arts with my mother's blessing. My mother was the _druí_ of the village, and Qetsiyah's magic made her curious and fascinated. They spent a lot of time together, in the woods or by the river, teaching each other their tricks, but soon she began to come often to our house. She was with us not even for a full moon cycle, and she had already gone mad when I didn't offer her the same attentions I had for the little slave of her, Tatia… She made a monster of me; she made sure that no one would ever came near me without fear or hatred in his eyes. _She killed me, _so that I could fully became this creature. Then she killed the poor girl. I managed to run away, but then I discovered she killed my entire family, because they had helped me escape. She showed no mercy, no pity, no compassion… And then, when I'd obviously started avenging myself, she found me and she called for all of her sisters and confined me in the Other Side. How nice, coming from a woman who claimed to love me."

His burning golden eyes hadn't left hers for all his speech, as if he was trying to assure himself that she wouldn't lost not even a word of the whole story. On her part, Caroline didn't expect him to be so talkative. She had believed that it would have been a difficult task to get him to talk, to gain information about him that would serve to frame him better, and yet here he was, confessing like a sinner in church.

"So she cursed you because you had an affair with her slave? Impressive." She muttered, trying not to show how curious she really was.

"I'd rather use another word, but even _impressive_ serves its purpose."

For some strange reason, Caroline could not prevent herself to feel compassion for him. The reason, of course, suggested to take the side of the Qetsiyah, not only as an ancestor, but also considering the fact that if Klaus had been imprisoned for so long, certainly he had his faults to blame - he himself had admittedly tried to take revenge after his curse. Nevertheless, Caroline also knew that witches tended to be impulsive and vindictive and to act based on strong passions – _heck, she was a witch too; she knew how they used to behave_! And they were not, in fact, better than those other creatures who they loved to despise - and that therefore the punishment of the hybrid, relying only on his account, was definitely too much. In short, cursing him because he did not reciprocate the affection of a woman was ridiculous, and frankly, Caroline wondered how it was possible that the other witches hadn't opposed. Surely, then, there was something else – other details of the story that he hadn't told her, for some reason – but right now she was not in the mood to listen to other stories.

Yet, despite the empathy that she could feel toward the hybrid, Caroline continued to question her role in the defeat of these witches who she didn't know but that she should have had to kill. _Perhaps, _she thought_, I could make him believe that I would help him, and then I could try to warn any of the witches of the danger..._ Of course, she had made a commitment – and she hadn't yet repented of having freed him, given that that way she could have saved her friends – but if she had known that this was the price to pay she would probably not have accepted so blindly to make a deal with him.

Oh, dear God – she had the impression that her head was going to explode under the burden of all that informations.

With a sigh, Caroline stood up and she approached the bed, longing for a dreamless sleep that for a few hours could take her problems away. "Okay, I think it's time for us to rest." She murmured, pushing the sheets on one side. "I mean, _I_ need to rest, I don't know your habits… but I need my beauty sleep if we want to be out of the state before next night."

"Well then, I'll take this opportunity to try to understand something of this new world", he said, turning his head towards the silent images that were running on the television screen.

The idea of an ancient creature watching the TV was somehow incredibly funny – or perhaps Caroline had already crossed the line of the normal mental sanity that kept her lucid and down-to-earth – so she let out a small and maybe a little too hysterical laughter, that she tried to cover with a fake cough. She had the sensation that, if she let herself feel something, _anything_, then she would start crying and never stop.

"Okay, well, you're free to do whatever you want, as long as you don't go around killing humans. We're in disguise, you know."

"I don't understand this way of speaking."

Caroline sighed impatiently. "I mean, no one can know we're here, and mostly no one has to know that we are supernatural beings. If someone becomes suspicious, my coven will find us immediately, for we are still too closed to Mystic Falls."

He had a smile that in his mind would have been reassuring. "You clarified that point quite well, love. Sleep quietly, I'll behave."

"I'm sure you'll do, since you can't go out anyway. The salt I put on the windows has a double effect, you know – prevents the witches to enter, and you to exit." Caroline couldn't hide the pride while she watched his eyes darkening threateningly.

"You want me to trust you, and yet you cannot trust me, can you?"

_I'm not so naïve. _Caroline couldn't help but smile mischievously. "Let's just say, trust must be earned. And from that point of view I think I've already done my part. Goodnight, Klaus", she added, laying under the sheets and turning off the lamp on the bedside table. The lights of the early morning sun were already filtering through the blinds of the windows, but Caroline didn't bother a little light. She was so tired that she would have probably slept even on the floor, if the occasion would require it, so she definitively could do it without any darkness.

Soon, the sleep began to take her into some merciful abyss, depriving her of the headaches caused by too many concerns.

.

.

.

As soon as that magical blood had started circulating through their veins, the Salvatore brothers as well with Elena and Tyler Lockwood started to think that something wasn't exactly where it was supposed to be. Or, as to use Damon's colorful expression: "Where the bloody hell is that blonde witch?"

Perhaps, if it wasn't for Tyler – who had found his girlfriend's absence quite weird, considering the present situation and the role she had played in their healing – they probably wouldn't even notice she was missing. No one truly appreciated the Lockwood boy – who knows if it depended on his wolfish nature or on his personality – but for once they could all agreed with him in thinking that it was a curious behavior for Caroline not being side by side with her boyfriend waiting for him to come to his senses. She didn't even free him from the cell – Stefan had heard his cries once that strange blood had done its magic, and he had found him still chained against a wall, naked and bruised.

So now, they were all sitting in the living room of the boarding house, drinking blood and bourbon from crystal glasses and waiting for Bonnie who should have come there in minutes. Elena, being held tight in Damon's arms, looked deeply concerned; Stefan was pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace, and Tyler could not keep his hands away from his phone, constantly calling Caroline and cursing under his breath when he heard the ringing voice mail.

At a quarter to nine – Elena hadn't moved her dark eyes from the grandfather clock who was ticking next to the piano – the young Bennett witch crossed the threshold, capturing everyone's eyes on her. Probably she didn't expect to see them alive and well, since the day before she had seen them almost dying on their beds, so she let herself to be distracted by the evident life that seemed to ooze from all their pores.

Elena was the first to literally whoosh in front of her best friend, to drag her into a suffocating embrace. "I couldn't wait any longer to thank you too, Bonnie!" She exclaimed, trying not to cry.

The witch smiled in return but she frowned, watching her with an enigmatic look. "Why, Elena? Did I miss something?"

"Are you kidding me? It's thanks to you and Caroline that we're still alive", she said, confused.

"I didn't do anything, Lena", Bonnie murmured, though she felt quite guilty about that. "I've spent the whole night searching for some kind of cure, and then this morning you called me and you were okay, and I just guessed that the epidemic was over. Isn't that what happened?"

It was Stefan who interrupted their reunion, clarifying the situation. "Actually no, it's not. Caroline came here with some… blood, I think, which cured us."

Bonnie took some steps away from her friend, her confused look leaving space to an upsetting one. "My God, she did it", she just whispered. "And where is she, now?"

"Well, that's the problem, Bonbon." Damon interjected, rolling his eyes. "We can't find her anywhere, the wolf here is goddamn worried, and so we've called you."

The witch let her eyes scrutinizing her friends one by one, and then, realizing this was not a joke, she simply let out a big sigh. "I'm afraid Caroline is in damn big trouble."

.

.

.

* * *

**Final Notes.**

The opening quote is taken from the 2x03 episode of "Grimm".

"_Druí"_ is an Old Irish word which means 'sorcerer', 'druid'.


End file.
